


a fraction of your time

by littlemagiclights



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemagiclights/pseuds/littlemagiclights
Summary: Alex defies the laws of the universe by travelling through time. Eliza waits for him.Based on The Time Traveler's Wife.





	a fraction of your time

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not very involved in the Hamilton fandom anymore, but I wrote this a while ago and figured I should share it anyway. Enjoy!

(Eliza is six, and Alex is twenty nine.)

This is the perfect spot to set up her tea table. The clearing is level, the house is barely visible from where she sits, and the light streams through the gaps in the trees to give everything an ethereal glow. Best of all, it's hers. It's not a hand-me-down from Angelica, nor something that Peggy can stick her nose into. Just hers.

When the naked man appears with a pop, the clearing loses its charm.

The first thing she does is scream and hide behind the nearest tree. The house is clear from where she stands and maybe if she runs fast enough the man won't catch her.

Her feet are poised to move and the blood is rushing in her ears, but something roots her to the tree, studying the strange man. He looks at the tea table with a slight smile and picks up one of her dolls, rubbing the hair between his fingers.

"Don't touch that!" She says, stepping out from behind the tree, forgetting that she's supposed to be hiding from this stranger.

He jumps and looks at her. "Eliza! There you are!" He moves behind another tree, leaving only his face poking out to speak.

She sticks her chin out. "I go by Betsey." She does rather like the sound of Eliza though, especially the way this man says it.

"My apologies, Betsey. Um, is this the first time you've met me?"

"Yes, and Mama says I'm not to talk to strangers." She really should be going to tell Mama, but she's not scared, really, and if he knows her maybe he's really not a stranger.

"Oh. Well, can you get some of your father's clothes for me? Usually you have them in a box, out here, with your tea table and everything." He finishes his sentence with an awkward hand wave and a red face. Eliza complies, sprinting to the house, grabbing some of her father's old clothes and running back. She waits as he changes and steps out from behind the tree.

Her father's clothes are loose on him, and he cinches the belt to the second tightest loop to get it to fit. The sleeves dangle off his arm, making him look like a scarecrow. "Thanks, Betsey," he says, bowing.

"It's okay if you call me Eliza," she says, slightly out of breath. She's faster than Angelica when they race, but tires quicker. "But I don't know your name."

"Call me Alex." He says, and there's a shift in his eyes, the same one Angelica gets when she's playing a trick on her.

"Okay, Alex." There's a ton of questions she has (who are you? How do you know me?) But she shoves them down.

She then hears voices, and it's Angelica and Peggy calling her name. Alex looks towards the house and back to her.

"Eliza, I have to go. These clothes," he says, pulling on his sleeve. "Can you put them in a box for me and leave it here? I'll be back soon."

"Oh, okay." Angelica and Peggy's voices grow louder, and Alex disappears with a pop, leaving the pile of clothes behind. She folds them as neatly as she can, and puts them under the tea table.

She's left the clearing with more than she brought in, she thinks. Now she has her very own secret.

* * *

  
(Eliza is six, Alex is twenty six.)

"Tell me how you get here." Eliza says, hands on hips and staring down the man who has crammed himself in one of her tiny chairs. He wears a pink hat too small for his head and tries not to move too much to keep it from falling off.

"I'm a time traveller." He replies, not wanting to lie to her. She hasn't told him when she first met him, but he can tell this is one of his earlier visits, because the box of clothes isn't there yet.

"You're lying. Tell me the truth." The look she gives him is the same one Big Eliza does when he makes a particularly bad joke.

"Not lying." Even Big Eliza acts like she doesn't believe him sometimes, even after meeting him over and over again.

"Tell me how, then." He shrugs in response. He doesn't even know the answer to that.

"Magic, I guess." She raises her eyebrows at that. It's a familiar expression, even on a younger Eliza. "Sometimes my arm or leg gets numb, and then I go. Off to the past."

"Do you know me in the future?" She asks, and he knows she's been holding the question in for a while from the way her knee bounces.

"Like, in real life?"

"This is real life, silly," he replies.

She sighs and shakes her head.

"When you're not time travelling," she clarifies. "Do you know me?"

He evades the question. There's no saying what could happen to the timeline if he tells her that they'll be married. Instead he picks up a doll and raises a teacup to its mouth.

Perceptive as always, she capitalizes on his hesitation. "You do know me! What am I like?" One of the tiny teacups on the table tumbles to the ground.

"I can't tell you," he says.

She pouts at that and crosses her arms. "Fine then." Her tongue is stuck out like a little lizard and Alex laughs and does the same to her. She tackles him then and pummels him with tiny fists.

"Stop," he says when the blows lessen in force and speed, feigning defeat. Eliza climbs off of him and wipes sweat off on her sleeve.

The call comes then, this time from Mr. Schuyler, his deep voice almost echoing in the clearing.

She goes, and Alex accompanies her, her hand in the crook of his elbow. When she reaches the door, she turns back and gives him a tiny wave.

He returns it, and then lets time take him away.

* * *

  
(Eliza is twenty-three, Alexander is twenty-five.)

She sees him across the room at the ball, and pulls Angelica to the side. "You see him?" she says, gesturing to the man who just swaggered in with loud, rambunctious friends in tow.

"Mmmhm." Angelica stares too. She's been flirting with every man in the room, twirling and laughing and smiling. This new man must be her next target.

"He's mine." It sounds so possessive, but it's the first time she's seen him in real life, not on some weird time escapade. She hadn't realized they were around the same age. (Her heart had, apparently.)

"Don't you worry," says Angelica, brushing Eliza's cheek. She weaves across the floor to Alex and slides next to him, setting a hand on his shoulder. He smiles at Angelica, and she smiles back, and there's the half smile and intelligent eyes she had grown up knowing. They're now directed towards Angelica, and she can feel her heart sinking in her chest. She won't tear up then, even though her eyes seem to want to.

Then he turns and smiles at her. It's Angelica who pulls him to her, but his eyes stay with hers the whole time.

"Elizabeth Schuyler. It's a pleasure to meet you." She can't say they've already met, of course. She curtseys and tries to keep her heart from leaping out of her chest.

"Schuyler?" He asks, casting a glance at Angelica, who stands beside him with a wide grin. With that, Eliza knows that he doesn't know her yet. He hasn't met the Schuyler family, or been in the woods behind their house, or met with a young Eliza and drunk tea with her.

"My sister." Angelica confirms. Eliza hasn't seen him in clothes that fit, but the military uniform he wears makes him look every bit the prince in the stories she read when she was younger.

"Thank you for all your service." She says. Alex never told her he fought in the war, but then again never told her the future anyway.

"If it takes fighting a war for us to meet it will have been worth it," he replies. Angelica says something afterwards, but she doesn't listen. She focuses on the light grip Alex has on her hand as he kisses it. Her sister finally walks away and it's just her and Alex.

"May I have this dance?" He asks, but he pulls her to the dance floor before she has a chance to answer.

They dance like they did sometimes in the woods when Eliza was in her teens. They flow together, and Alex seems surprised.

"I never told you my name," he says, spinning her around and catching her again, this time pulling her closer.

"Is that so," she says, wondering if she should tell him that he visits with her younger self in his future.

"My name is Alexander Hamilton."

"Well, Alexander, you seem to be a very interesting person." She refrains from calling him Alex, because that was before he became so very real to her.

"Oh, you have no idea." He laughs and twirls her again. She spins and laughs too. _I understand more than you know._

* * *

  
(Eliza is ten, and Alex is twenty five.)

After the third letter he writes Big Eliza is the first time he goes to see Little Eliza. There is a box by his feet with clothes a size too big, but he pulls them on anyway. "Alex" is painstakingly carved into the top in a child's handwriting.

She appears as if it of nowhere, dark hair neatly pulled back. "Sorry, I just got out of my piano lessons," she says, going to his side and wrapping her arms around him.

He pulls away and brushes the coat off. "Do I know you?" Normally small children enjoy being around him, but he doesn't welcome their sticky hands and incessant whining.

"I'm Eliza, silly." She laughs and Alex remembers the beautiful dark-haired girl at the ball he writes letters to daily. She studies him further, chin resting in hand.

"You know, you look younger. Is this your first visit?" There's a gap in her mouth from a lost tooth that makes her speech sound off.

"Yes. Do I, um, come here often?" He asks.

She pulls a wrinkled paper out of her dress and hands it to him. It's his own handwriting, with a long list of dates.

"Last time you came was last week, and then you come again tomorrow. Then after that you don't come back for months." There's a slight frown to her face at that.

"Sorry," he says, even though there's not real reason to apologize. Eliza brightens up again and giggles.

"Will you help me with my penmanship?" She says, reaching into the box once again and pulling out paper. The words she writes are less smooth and curvy, but the handwriting is more or less the same as the Eliza from his time.

He puts his hand on hers and helps her form the "x" in his name, and adds the flourish at the end. Her small hands are soon stained with ink, and the paper is full of names. Angelica and Margarita(Peggy) are her sisters, Philip is her father, and the biggest name, right in the center of the paper, is her own, Elizabeth. Alex is crammed in the corner, and the "y" in Peggy's name covers it.

"I have to go." He tells her. She gets up and hugs him once again, and this time he lets his own arms drape around her shoulders.

"I don't like watching you go." She says, but stays anyway. As he feels himself fading, he waves, and she waves back.

* * *

  
(Eliza is twenty three, Alexander is twenty six.)

The first time he disappears from the bed Eliza panics. The bed is now cold, and the darkness is too quiet without Alexander (she calls him by his full name now, to differentiate the two.)

After some time, there's a pop, and he climbs back in bed with her, and she reaches out to touch him. "When did you go to?" She whispers.

"I saw my mother," he replies. "Before we both got sick. She was playing with my brother and I."

He reaches out to hold her hand and she tenses.

"I didn't know that you disappeared when you travelled."

He laughs, and even though the room is dark she can see his smile clearly. "I can't be here and there too."

Of course he can't, even though his own time travelling breaks all the rules. "Does that mean there are -were- two Alexanders running around?"

He smiles back at her with sleep softening his face. "Shhh. Go back to sleep." With that, she stays quiet.

She wishes he could both stay with her and fight in the war, but that would break his own personal rules, which seem to outweigh the will of the universe. He moves, again, too far away from her, and his chest begins the steady rise and fall of sleep.

She lies awake for a while, and then lets herself close her eyes. She has a week left with Alexander before he leaves.

* * *

  
(Eliza is forty, Alex is twenty six.)

When he travels this time, he is not in the Schuyler woods, but in the house he and Eliza live in. He goes first to the box by the door he keeps full of clothes. The box is covered with dust and the fabric smells of disuse, but he shrugs them on anyway. The walls are strangely devoid of decoration and there are toys strewn across the floor. He peeks into the room that was his office to find two small beds and children sleeping in them.

Alex smiles. They're beautiful and perfect and everything he would've ever wanted.

He then goes to the bedroom down the hall, going to surprise Eliza. The door creaks, when he opens it, and Eliza turns to face the door from the desk in the corner (a new addition).

She is older, and there are dark circles under her eyes, and she looks so very tired.

Her face hardens as she meets his eyes, and there's an odd glint in the look she gives him. "What do you want?" She asks with an edge to her words.

On the desk glows a single candle and a pot full of what looks like burning paper.

"Hi, Eliza." He wants to reach out to her but her arms are crossed and he instead averts his eyes. "I didn't expect to be here."

Her gaze softens slightly as she looks him up and down. "So you're here from the past, then. I thought you only travelled backwards."

He shrugs. "So did I." He seems to have come at an inopportune moment.

"Hm." There's a shuffle in one of the bedrooms, then a child's cry.

"I should go," he says, and he leaves. Eliza follows for a second and goes to a bedroom, where he can hear her humming to a baby. Soon the cries soften and he hears her footsteps return to their room, shutting the door.

He leaves then, and returns to the battlefield, where there is a war to be won.

* * *

  
(Eliza is twenty four, Alex is forty six.)

Baby Philip never stops crying, and she is so very tired, and Alexander isn't here. She rocks Philip back and forth, humming and swaying to a tune she had learned on the piano when she was young.

She hears a pop from somewhere in the house. Soon there's a knock on the door, and Alex comes in. He's older and the clothes that fit Alexander now stretch on this man, but the weary smile he gives her is the same.

"I'm waiting for you to come back from the war." She says before he can ask. He nods and sits on the edge of the bed.

"Philip, right?" He says, looking at the baby she holds. Philip sucks his thumb, oblivious to the father he's never met. She nods.

Alex reaches out, but shrinks back. "I come home soon. A few days from now."

Eliza tilts her head. "You've never told me about the future before." Not for lack of trying of course, but he had always refused to.

"Well, you should have already gotten the letter." She has. He said he was coming home soon. Alex looks once again at Philip. "May I hold him?"

She passes him over and Alex rocks him back and forth. Eliza hears him singing under his breath. Philip sleeps on. The moon comes in at an angle, illuminating father and son, and Eliza slips away to make herself some tea.

She thinks that maybe he was crying, but maybe it was just a trick of the moonlight.

* * *

  
(Alex is twenty seven.)

When he gets the letter from Laurens's father, he finds himself back in the bar where he first met the man. He panics for a second, and hides in the corner, not knowing what to do.

There's a tap on his shoulder, and Aaron Burr hands him a set of clothes, his head pointedly turned in the other direction. He slips into the clothes as Burr shields him from the crowd (luckily it's not crowded) and buys Burr a drink.

Burr leans back in his chair and swirls his drink in a circle, creating a mini-whirlpool. "You too?" He asks.

"I suppose so." Maybe that's how Burr got through school so fast.  
Burr laughs, but it sounds like it's stuck in the back of his throat. "When are you from?"

"After the war. We win." He isn't sure how much it affects the future, if it will at all, but since Burr is a traveller like himself, it shouldn't do anything.

Burr nods. "And Laurens is dead."

Alex almost chokes.

"This isn't my time either." Only then does Alex notice the gray at his temples, and the slump of his back. Burr shakes his head. "I told you, Alex. Fools who run their mouths off wind up dead."

There's something like anger rising up in his chest, and it claws its way out. "Laurens was a good man. He died for what he believed in."

Burr fixes him with a stare that seems to go through him. Alex glared back, chin held high and arms crossed.

Eventually, Burr blinks, and he straightens his back and raises the glass to Alex. A grin spreads across his face, the same one he gave Alex when visiting after the wedding. "Talk less, smile more, Alexander."

"I will never understand you," he replies, same as before. Nevertheless, he clinks his own glass to Burr's.

"Safe travels." Burr sets the drink down and exits the bar. Alex hears the pop from outside, and rises to follow.

* * *

  
(Eliza is thirty four, Alexander is thirty six.)

"You're always gone, Alexander," she says.

"Eliza, you know I can't control when I leave, only when I come back--"

"I'm not talking about the time travelling. You're just not here." And she knows what he's going to say. _I work from home, Eliza. I'm almost always here_. "Come with us to my father's. We can dance in the woods, like we did when I was younger. Don't you remember?"

Alexander's face twitches, and maybe he remembers. Maybe she isn't the only one who replays those memories on nights when Alexander isn't there.

"I can't. I'll lose my job if we don't get this plan through Congress." She knows his tricks now, knows how he says "we" to make it seem like a national effort rather than his own stubborn ambition, yet doesn't know how to argue against them.

"Take a break, Alexander. Please," because she doesn't know what else to say. Angelica's already presented her argument, and there's nothing else she can say.

"I'm sorry, Eliza." She can tell his mind's already in his work, already drafting ideas for the nation's treasury, already gone. She'll always be chasing him through time.

"You always write like you're running out of time," She nudges him, "even though you have more time than us all." She laughs. "Write to me while I'm upstate, okay?"

He nods and kisses her. She watches him walk back to the desk they set up in their room, watches him walk away.

She's jealous, she realizes. Jealous of the way he skips through time, jealous of the way he moves through the world like it belongs to him. It seems as if she'll always be waiting for him.

* * *

  
(Eliza is thirty five, Alexander is thirty six.

Alexander waits for the click that means Maria has locked her door, and walks back to his own house, whistling. He walks her home after each time, ever the gentleman. His hand feels numb, and he only barely gets through his door before he is gone.

The woods are dark, and he can hear the sound of crickets. The Schuyler house is lit up and there is laughter coming from it. A door opens, and a silhouette makes its way to the woods with a lantern. It's Big Eliza whose grinning face is illuminated so oddly. She waves to him, and he waves back.

"We just got here," she says, setting the lantern down and hugging him. Eliza had sent him a letter the day she had arrived, a few weeks back. That letter was now mixed into the stack of papers on his desk.

He misses her. Her hair smells of soap and smoke, and she looks at him as if he is the stars. Maria Reynolds's face passes through his mind.

"Let's go to the park I was telling you about." He protests, but her grip is firm and she pulls him along deeper into the woods, lantern swinging from her palm.

His eyes adjust and he can hear the sound of lapping water hitting the shore. They sit on the edge of the lake. Eliza chatters about her childhood and pushing Peggy into the lake, but he's not listening. He thinks about the work he has to do, the papers he has to write.

"My arm is numb," he lies, and Eliza nods and begins the walk back to the house.

By the time the house is in view, he lets himself disappear. Eliza knows the way back.

* * *

  
(Eliza is thirty five, Alexander is thirty seven.)

There is a knock at the door and it's not Alexander. He had gone out fuming and muttering, and if he would knock it would sound throughout the entire house, but this knock is quieter.

She opens the door to find none other than Aaron Burr himself. "Come in," she says, "Alexander will be back soon."

Burr laughs. "I ran into him earlier. He had a lot to say to me."

"He always does, doesn't he?" A shadow crosses his face for a second before returning to a politician's smile.

"I hope you don't blame me for taking your father's seat."

She looks him up and down. Burr's charismatic and a charmer, but so is Alexander. He had ranted to her about Burr's lack of values for hours.

"No. I know how you men are with your politics." She laughs then. "Alexander is something though."

"That's right." Philip walks in as she gets a drink for Burr. He is every bit the little Alexander. His eyes narrow and his back straightens in preparation for a fight.

"Philip." She warns him, and he softens. "Manners."

"How are you today, Mr. Burr?" He asks instead. Burr stares at him as if he sees a ghost.

"I'm doing well." He opens and closes his mouth a few times. "Philip. Same age as my daughter, correct?"

Philip's chest puffs out. "Yeah."

"Please send our regards to the Theodosias," says Eliza. Burr adopts the same scared expression as earlier and struggles to get the words out.

"Of course I will." He avoids meeting her eyes. "I must get home to them. Thank you for this." He gestures to the table.

"Anytime, Mr. Burr. Next time bring your wife." She smiles and walks him out.

"Why was he here, Mom?" Philip tugs on her sleeve.

"Looking for your father." There's a faint sound like a pop outside. She cleans the dishes Burr used and puts them away. "Who should be back soon."

Alexander doesn't return until much later. His clothes are rumpled and he collapses onto the bed next to her without changing. "Burr came by looking for you." She tells him.  
"Is that so." He says, rising and brushing his clothes off. There's much less anger than she expected in his voice. He's hurried as if he has something to do, which he always does.

She lets him scurry away to his work. Maybe one day he'll let her in.

* * *

  
(Alex is forty two.)

Alex is on the island where he was born. The town is made up of debris and fallen trees, and he realizes this is just after the hurricane.

He remembers it well. If he closes his eyes he can recall the yellow of the sky in the eye of the storm, and the attempt on the rubble to shield himself from the rest of the storm.  
Now the sky is a vibrant blue, but the damage is already done.

If he wanted to find himself, he would know exactly where to look. After the hurricane hit, he had shut himself away to write, head bent and pen scribbling away.

He knows now that the essay he writes gets him off the island, to greatness. The essay gets him to be President Washington's-- ex-President, now, he reminds himself, though he's still Mr. President to everyone-- Secretary of Treasury. The essay brings him to America, where both he and the country will be free of their pasts.

And Jefferson threatens to destroy it all. Jefferson with his stupid purple coat and permanent smirk accused him of misusing government funds. He was wrong of course, but words travel, whether they're correct or not. No, the only way to prevent potential ruin is to put it in writing. So Alexander does.

* * *

  
(Eliza is forty.)

She holds the list of dates Alex gave her when she was young in her hand, and debates burning it.  
All of his letters are already burnt and gone, his paragraphs lost in curls of smoke. Still she holds on to his words written on paper that still smells like the woods, and rubs the corner between her fingers.

Alex from the past had already visited, not knowing that this time's Alexander now slept in his office and saw the children only on Sundays. Not knowing that he had ruined her life by exposing all the sordid details to the world.

When that young man stood in the doorway, she wanted to hate him. She wanted to wipe the cocky grin he always wore off his face, wanted to stop the confident air he carried himself around with.

But he looked so young, and she couldn't.

She folded the paper again and tucked it away. Maybe she would burn it tomorrow.

* * *

  
(Alexander is forty five.)

Philip meets him in his office. He's bouncing like he did when he was nine and performing a poem with his mother (his mother, whose lips are perpetually pressed together every time she is forced to interact with Alexander.) He details George Eacker's insults with increasing volume.

"I came to ask you for advice. This is my very first duel," he says, fists balled and jaw set.

"Did your friends attempt to negotiate a peace?" Alexander knows the rules for a duel, been a second for a few, but never participated in one.

"He refused to apologize," Philip says, his hair flying back and forth with each head shake. "The duel's going to be in New Jersey."

Alexander is reminded of the joke he used to make with his friends: everything is legal in New Jersey.

He explains the honorable thing to do to Philip, and the strong-willed young man in front of him shrinks down to the stuttering boy of nine.

"Philip, your mother can't take another heartbreak," he says. Eliza's somber expression passes through his mind. She's laughed with him about the stupidity of duels, and how people who have issues should just talk them out. (Talk, she had said, finger raised to point at Alexander. Not write veiled insults and release them to the world.)

He gives Philip his guns, and the boy hugs them to his chest. "Make me proud, son," he says, and Philip is once again a proud young man.

He can't wait for him to come back and tell him everything.

* * *

  
(Eliza is forty four, Alexander is forty six.)

Alexander summons her to the garden. She doesn't want to talk to him, hasn't really spoken to him since Philip.

"Eliza, I saw him." Alexander tells her, and his head is in his hands. "I saw Philip as a baby. It was before I came back from the war."

She perches herself on the bench next to him, ready to flee at any moment. Her back is stiff. It's so quiet.

"He was so small, and so young, and I held him." Here he chokes up, and she feels the tears welling up in her eyes too. Her son was gone, her darling Philip, and she would never see him that young again.

"It's not fair." She says. Alex looks over at her, lips pursed. Eliza regrets opening her mouth, but continues anyway. "It's not fair that you get to go back and see him and I'm stuck here. It's not fair that you get to hold him when..."

She trails off then and Alex opens his mouth. She waits for a perfectly crafted sentence that will stump her, but he shuts his mouth and instead just looks at her. _When you're the one who sent him to die_ sits in the air and hangs between them.

He sighs then, and pours his heart out. There is no craft to his words, no eloquency or prose, just a plaintive plea for her to allow him to be there by her side.

Eliza feels like she's being cracked open, and the tears flow, and she can only nod her assent. He sits a respectable distance away, and she can tell he wants to hold her, wants to stop the sobs that she can't control, but holds himself back.

She reaches out and takes his hand, and they cry together for their lost son. The gap between then disappears, and they collapse into one another. They support each other.

Sometimes they walk in the park during night, and they look up at the stars and Alexander points out the constellations and their stories. He talks and she listens, most of the time. She's okay with the quiet, but he isn't, and she can tell from the way he speaks and tries to fill it.

"Philip would like it here," he says. "He liked the quiet." When she doesn't respond, he sighs. "Sorry, Eliza."

She tangles her hand in his, and puts her head on his shoulder. He doesn't try to fill the silence anymore. He just holds her.

* * *

  
(Eliza is forty seven, Alex is forty nine.)

This time it's Aaron Burr who knocks on his door in the middle of the night and stands there with hat in hand.

He's surprised, to say the least. He wouldn't expect Burr to visit after the letter. "Come in," he says, shutting the door carefully to avoid the creak. Burr follows him in. When Alexander offers him a seat, he refuses.

"You got my letter," says Burr, his fingers dancing along the edge of his cap.

"I did. Did you get my response?" He could refute Burr's claims now, but it was hard to think straight. He wanted to go back to bed. He had missed Eliza even more after getting splinters from sleeping in his office chair. His response would say everything he wanted to say, anyway.

"That doesn't matter." Alexander studies Burr's face, notices the gray hairs and wrinkles in his face.

"You're older Burr, aren't you." He doesn't phrase it as a question. Burr nods. "Why are you here?"

Burr moves toward the door. "I can't tell you the future."

"Why?" Of course Burr can't tell him anything, but there must be a reason he's here, and his mind races to figure it out.

"Keep writing, Alexander," says Burr, and slips out the door. The _smile more_ that he expects never comes.

He goes back to bed and lays down next to Eliza. In her sleep there is a ghost of a smile stretched across her face. Maybe she is dreaming of their son.

A few weeks later, he gets the letter from Burr challenging him to a duel, and he understands. The man who travels so freely in time is running out of it. He writes, he writes, he writes.

* * *

  
(Eliza is ninety-seven)

His letter said he'd be back one day. She didn't know when, but it was too long to wait.

She reads through his writings, but she doesn't have the mental stamina he did. The words blur together until they swim in front of her face in the candlelight.

Sometimes she regrets burning the letters he wrote her, but she doesn't really need him. All she needs is what's in her head.

The orphanage is going well. The children are growing, laughing, learning. Sometimes their laughs and songs remind her of Philip. Sometimes their stubbornness reminds her of Alexander.

The sky is dark and the room illuminated only by the candle at the desk. Behind her there is a pop, and the door creaks open.

It's Alex, Alexander, all versions of him together and smiling and young again. She smiles and reaches out to him.

There is so much light. Alexander moves towards the brightest spot and gestures for her to follow.

She does, of course. She always would have. The room is left dark and empty, with nothing but a puff of smoke curling away from an extinguished candle.

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend the Time Traveler's Wife to everyone. Thanks for reading!


End file.
